The document editor that turns your team's content into knowledge.

Docs is an open-source text editor: web-native, made for real-time collaboration, cleanly structured documents and sub-documents with full ownership of your data. Run it yourself, or use any public instance run by the community.

Free & open source No installation to try it 16.6k ⭐ on GitHub
A Docs document titled 'Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen', with a Delacroix painting and three collaborators — Mirabeau, Jean-Joseph, and Jérôme — live-editing with highlighted text and cursor tags.
Built on solid open-source foundations
Discover Docs

Learn the core principles

What you'll notice within your first few minutes in Docs.

Features

Everything a team needs to write together

From a quick shared note to a full team knowledge base — Docs scales with how you actually work.

Real-time collaboration

Live cursors, presence, and comments — edit the same document with your team at the same time, no conflicts.

Block-based editing

Slash commands, tables, columns, collapsible sections and media — clean formatting without fighting the editor.

Knowledge organization

Nest documents into sub-pages and hierarchies to build a real, searchable knowledge base for your team.

Granular access control

Decide who can view, comment, or edit — restricted access, external guests, or a public link.

Import & export

Bring in .docx and .md files, and export to .docx, .odt or .pdf whenever you need to.

Version history

Every save is a version. Roll back to any earlier state of a document without losing a thing.

Fast search

Find any document in seconds, and pin the ones you reach for most.

Own your data

Self-host on your own infrastructure. Nothing about Docs requires trusting a third party with your content.

Built for accessibility

Actively worked toward WCAG / RGAA compliance, with accessibility improvements shipped every release.

Optional AI

AI that helps you write — on your terms

Summarize, rewrite, fix typos, translate, or turn notes into slides. AI is a feature you can turn on, not a requirement to use Docs.

Bring your own model

AI actions can be wired to the LLM provider you choose when you run your own instance.

The reference instance, as an example

docs.la-suite.eu routes AI requests through Mistral models via Albert API, hosted in SecNumCloud — one privacy-conscious way to configure it, not the only one.

Open-source observability

Response quality can be monitored with Langfuse, an open-source, self-hostable observability tool.

Selection: « ...the Q3 roadmap review is scheduled for next Thursday... »
AI action: Summarize
The Q3 roadmap review happens next Thursday.
AI action: Turn into slides
A digital commons

Not a black box — a commons you can run yourself

Docs isn't tied to one company or one server. Anyone can read the code, deploy it, and shape where it goes.

100% open source

MIT licensed. Read it, audit it, fork it — nothing is hidden behind the product.

Self-hostable anywhere

Docker Compose, Kubernetes, Nix, or YunoHost. Your infrastructure, your rules.

No lock-in

Export to PDF, Word, ODT or Markdown whenever you want. Your content leaves as easily as it came in.

Verified Digital Public Good

Recognized by the DPG Alliance as software that serves the public interest, for anyone to adopt.

Good to know: documents aren't end-to-end encrypted yet, so Docs isn't suited for classified or highly restricted content. Check the repository for the current security posture before handling sensitive data.
Community moment

A Hacker News sensation

For two days in March 2025, Docs sat at #1 on the Hacker News front page — and the GitHub stars never really stopped climbing after that.

#1 Front page rank
1,952 Upvotes
454 Comments

Read the thread on Hacker News →

A sticker made to celebrate Docs reaching #1 on Hacker News

GitHub stars over time

Real history, pulled from the GitHub API.

Community

Built by 67 people, not one company

Every avatar below is a real person who has shipped a fix, a feature, or a review to Docs on GitHub.

AntoLC lunika Ovgodd sampaccoud PanchoutNathan rouja lebaudantoine virgile-dev rvveber joehybird StephanMeijer maboukerfa Ash-Crow sylvinus olaurendeau pvrnn z3ntu ZouicheOmar qbey johanneskastl Ma27 Zorin95670 Anto59290 dtinth dakshesh14 soyouzpanda lindenb1 emersion NathanVss revolunet jco-c ChristopherSpelt mascarpon3 bzg AlexB-mgtc wowi42 mweinelt moschlar buffer51 PeterDaveHello pierreozoux bmcgavin mosa-riel unteem Tom-Hubrecht comexos buildwithricky networkException actuallypav tibroc ydnd Appryll bfontaine zeylos berrydenhartog BolajiAyodeji cameroncking chaibax dominikkaminski manuhabitela eduxstad erincandescent gustavotrott hadrienblanc Henry-Hiles karlhorky k-cybulski

See the full contributor graph →

Roadmap

Built in the open, funded in the open

What's planned for Semester 2, 2026 — and the public institutions funding it.

Point to a document section with links to blocks

Planned · S2 🇫🇷 DINUM Issue #653

Stay up to date with mentions and notifications

Planned · S2 🇫🇷 DINUM Issue #2326

Migrate your LibreOffice documents with .odt imports

Planned · S2 🇫🇷 DINUM🇪🇺 EC Issue #1240
Dependency: DocSpec

Track who did what with change attribution

Planned · S2 🇫🇷 DINUM🇪🇺 EC🇩🇪 ZenDiS Issue #119
Dependencies: Yjs, BlockNote

Write and display equations and diagrams

Planned · S2 (mermaid.js and LaTeX) 🇫🇷 DINUM🇪🇺 EC Pull request
Dependency: BlockNote

Find a document via content search

Planned · S2 🇫🇷 DINUM Issue #1493
Dependency: OpenSearch (Find)

Suggest document improvements

Planned · S2 🇫🇷 DINUM🇪🇺 EC🇩🇪 ZenDiS Issue #2491
Dependencies: Yjs and BlockNote

Organize your documents with Drive

Planned · TBD 🇫🇷 DINUM Issue #2492

See the full roadmap →

Team culture

We also make kick-ass stickers

A few of the ones currently stuck to our laptops.

"Let's ship" sticker of a cartoon steamship
Sticker of baguette, cheese, and pretzel mascots sharing a laptop with an EU flag on screen
DOOM movie-poster parody sticker with a DOCS title
"Liberté, Égalité, CRDTé" sticker: Marianne holding a pen atop a stack of books
Code-editor-style sticker reading "Yes, Govs Code"
"Office refugees welcome" sticker with the Docs logo
Round "LaSuite Docs" badge sticker with the product logo
Get started

Two ways in

Kick the tires on a public instance today, or stand up your own in a few commands.

Try it now

Use a public instance

No installation needed. Open a live demo document, or browse instances that community members and organizations already run and make public.

Run it yourself

Self-host your own

Docs runs on Docker Compose, Kubernetes, or community-maintained methods like Nix and YunoHost.

# clone & bootstrap
git clone https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs.git
cd docs
make bootstrap FLUSH_ARGS='--no-input'
make run

Opens at localhost:3000. Requires Docker Compose & GNU Make.

FAQ

Questions people actually ask

Can I really self-host Docs?
Yes. Docs supports Kubernetes, Docker Compose, and community-maintained methods like Nix and YunoHost. See the installation guide to get running on your own infrastructure.
Is there a hosted version I can just use?
Yes — several public instances are run by community members and organizations. See the list of public instances or open the live demo above.
How does saving work?
Docs saves automatically as you type — there's no save button. A save is triggered after about a minute of inactivity (shared across everyone co-editing the document).
Can I work offline?
If a document is already open in your browser, you can keep editing offline. Keep the tab open — your changes sync automatically once you're back online.
Can I restore an older version?
Yes. Every save creates a version, and you can restore any earlier version from the document's history at any time.
Who maintains Docs?
Docs is developed in the open by a community of contributors. It was originally incubated by France's DINUM as part of La Suite numérique, and is now a recognized Digital Public Good — usable and improvable by anyone, not only its original authors.
How can I contribute?
Issues and pull requests are welcome on GitHub. You can also join the conversation on Matrix.

Pick your path

Open a document in seconds, or clone the repo and make it yours — either way, it's yours to keep.